178: The Five Elements of Involution

“I have to say, courting death is the underlying gene of the Federal Human Race, and the Five Elements Clone has perfectly inherited and even strengthened this gene.”

Lin Chen looked at God Lin Chen and Mirror Lin Chen beside him, feeling a bit emotional.

When he first obtained the Mirror Duplicate Body, which was Mirror Lin Chen, he wasn't as brave as the Five Elements Clone; the fear of death wasn't that easy to overcome.

At that time, he tried his best to avoid the Copy Body's death, occasionally intervening, but one death still occurred. Later, he became accustomed to the death of Copy Bodys, and he was also able to overcome the fear of death.

Now, for the Five Elements Clone, he doesn't maintain a strong connection with it, nor does he constantly observe it, let alone control its actions; it's completely free-range.

Only after the Five Elements Clone dies will everything it experienced be accepted by him.

Mirror Lin Chen and other Copy Bodys are essentially Lin Chen himself, indistinguishable from him, but the Five Elements Clone is not. They are purely puppet-like Copy Bodys, and can even be given independent consciousness and life without realizing they are Copy Bodys.

However, Lin Chen didn't do this. Doing so would easily cause the Five Elements Clone to lose control and bring unnecessary trouble. Informing them of their Copy Body identity in advance and setting up some safeguards would, on the contrary, ignite the Five Elements Clone's drive to court death.

Since the purpose of their birth is to die quickly, dying in a spectacular way is always better than dying silently.

Life is endless, and courting death never stops.

As soon as the Five Elements Clone stepped into the spatial rift, because their entry times were inconsistent, they had already gone their separate ways the moment they entered the spatial rift, embarking on their respective journeys of courting death.

“Ah, it died already?”

Just as Lin Chen returned to the Lin Chen Dao Domain, preparing to enter a state of secluded cultivation, a fragmented soul carrying memories arrived beside him.

This is the unique settlement screen after the Five Elements Clone's death. The fragmented soul will carry the Five Elements Clone's experiences and, under the power of a rule inscribed as truth, instantly return to Lin Chen's side.

At this point, Lin Chen can choose to merge with the fragmented soul and experience everything it went through, either from the Five Elements Clone's perspective or a third-person perspective.

“Let me see just how unlucky it was to die less than half a minute after leaving.”

Lin Chen merged with the soul and entered the memory environment, observing the experience of this quickly deceased Five Elements Clone from an omniscient perspective.

Fire · Lin Chen was the first to step into the spatial rift. Perhaps it was bad luck, or perhaps it was a coincidence, but he immediately encountered spatial turbulence. Unprepared, Fire · Lin Chen was instantly swept into the depths of the spatial turbulence.

(The five elements are metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. The Five Elements Clone is named by adding the attribute to Lin Chen.)

At this moment, Fire · Lin Chen immediately entered a Spiritual Stealth state to avoid the damage from the spatial turbulence and stabilize his body.

Although he didn't cultivate the Five Elements Clone, besides not inheriting the four powers of Malice Incarnation, Void Incarnation, Dao Oblivion, and faith-based transformation, all other powers were inherited. The power application level was on par with the main body, only the cultivation base was relatively low, unable to support the inherited powers.

The depths of the spatial turbulence were clearly outside the scope of human luck. The bad luck suppressed by human luck finally found an outlet and fiercely poured onto Fire · Lin Chen.

As for why Faith Lin Chen, who was outside the Federal Territory, didn't experience such tragic bad luck, it's because the Dust World Sect also has human luck covering it, which can still suppress bad luck, though its effect is not as strong as in the Federal Territory.

And so, a spatial evil beast wandered through the spatial turbulence, and the mere spatial fragmentation it caused sliced Fire · Lin Chen into pieces.

The Tenth Order Five Elements Clone was still very fragile. Even with Spiritual Stealth active, avoiding 99.99% of the damage, it was still instantly killed by spatial power reaching the Ascension to God Seventh Order.

“Tsk, the first generation Fire Element Clone's level of bad luck is somewhat high. Being instantly killed by encountering a rare spatial evil beast—this unlucky way of dying is rare throughout the entire universe.”

The death of the first generation Fire Element Clone didn't elicit much reaction from Lin Chen. On the contrary, he was happy that his overall bad luck had indeed diminished by 0.1%.

A Tenth Order Five Elements Clone can carry and consume very little bad luck individually, but that's not a problem. As long as the time is extended and the number of Five Elements Clones exploring outside increases, no matter how much bad luck there is, it will be completely consumed.

Without wasting time, Lin Chen began to gestate the second generation Fire Element Clone. During the gestation of the Copy Body, the other first generation Five Elements Clones did not experience any accidents and were still alive and well.

After the second generation Fire Element Clone was gestated, it immediately asked,

“Main body, how did my predecessor die? How long did it survive? How much bad luck did it consume?”

“Uh, if calculated from the moment it entered the spatial rift, it survived for 28 seconds, died from the random wandering of a spatial evil beast, and consumed 0.1% of bad luck.”

“Living short and dying randomly is too disgraceful for our Fire Elemental lineage. I must break the survival record and the death method record!”

The second generation Fire Element Clone suddenly became very serious, with an expression of bearing a heavy responsibility, and inexplicably started to 'compete'.

Lin Chen could already imagine that after the other second generation Five Elements Clones were re-gestated, they would definitely rush towards the direction of 'competing'.

Life is only once, but the identity of the five elements is fixed. Therefore, for the glory of the five elements, they will definitely compete for various records, as this is proof that they once existed.

“Main body, open a spatial rift for me, I'm going to court death!”

“Whatever makes you happy.”

After seeing off the second generation Fire Element Clone into the spatial rift, Lin Chen pondered for a moment, returned to the Lin Chen Dao Domain, and arranged a much lower peak next to Enlightenment Peak, naming it Five Elements Peak.

Then he began to transform Five Elements Peak.

On the transformed Five Elements Peak's summit, there was a Five Elements Hall filled with five colors. In the plaza in front of the Five Elements Hall, five stone tablets stood, each recording the experiences of generations of Five Elements Clones.

Since the Five Elements Clone would engage in internal competition, he would formalize this internal competition model to further control the Five Elements Clone from getting out of hand.

“Tsk tsk, the Five Elements Clone can be considered a part of my concept. When I'm ruthless, I even exploit myself. I'm truly not human.”

Lin Chen sighed, then filled the Five Elements Hall with a large amount of five elements materials, starting from Tenth Order, with the highest being Mid-level God. In the future, after the Five Elements Clone dies, it will be gestated again by the Five Elements Hall.

The gestated Five Elements Clone, upon leaving the Five Elements Hall, would see five stone tablets representing the five elements. The stone tablets recorded the experiences of generations of Five Elements Clones and awarded varying amounts of points based on survival time, rarity of death method, and amount of bad luck consumed.

The points have two uses.

First, based on the points ranking, the size of the five elements stone tablet is determined. The higher the points, the larger the five elements stone tablet, and vice versa.

Second, points can be consumed to select the quality of gestation materials for the next generation Five Elements Clone after one's own death. The higher the points, the higher the quality of materials that can be redeemed.

“Why do I feel like I'm being so inhumane?”

Lin Chen re-examined the point rules he had set. He was clearly not treating the Five Elements Clone as himself; he was treating them as cannon fodder.

Perhaps it was because the Five Elements Clone was merely gestated by him using five elements materials, only a portion of unconscious soul was separated to activate its characteristics, just a puppet resembling himself, unlike Mirror Lin Chen and other Copy Bodys whose souls are closely linked, thoughts synchronized, and controlled by multi-tasking.

So, the Five Elements Clone cannot be considered himself. It's like immortals and mortals both being human, but essentially not the same race, merely forcibly categorized as one due to their appearance.

After understanding why he would do this, Lin Chen realized the essence of the Five Elements Clone. This is a tool-person type of cultivation method, not a Copy Body in the traditional sense that can serve as a life-saving trump card.

No wonder the Five Elements Clone cultivation method is clearly a top-tier Copy Body cultivation method, with many advantages and few disadvantages, yet the number of Federal Human Race practitioners is not large. It's only used for emergencies and will never become mainstream.

After all, Copy Bodys still need to maintain constant connection, be one with the self, and be able to host the true spirit well.